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Some guests on cable tv news/infotainment shows have claimed the hired Brit agent has credibility in the world IT community. And that he used his contacts in Russia to prepare the dossier. Given Clapper says US IT cannot confirm or deny the truth of the dossier contents, which is also why most of the mainstream media sat on it for so long, what’s the point of releasing it or even confirming the dossier exist to the US public? They cannot assess the truth of its contents, but can only let it bounce around in their minds, definitely harming Trump’s ability to do his job effectively as POTUS. Last ditch effort to unseat him and/or lay groundwork for getting him dumped? Surely as a former KGB guy, Putin has been aware of the dossier, so I’m not sure why he would have allowed it to be made as Trump has been a fan of his.

I read that, when he went into hiding, the agent asked his neighbour to look after his cat. Bang goes any credibility right there. No real SIS/MI6 agent would have a pet of any type, and cats are for super villains. This guy is, at best, some minor back room clerk.

Yes, but we do know the name of the person who, ahem, leaked the document. Its Christopher Steele, a former MI6 agent, who has been a respected source of information for decades. He is now hiding, by the way, as some people who have run afoul of Putin met with bad ends.

Trump himself once said it his history with women would keep him from being president, and while they were both on Howard Stern, AJ Benza a gossip columnist teased Trump for bragging how much he loved Russia because the women there “have no morals.”

In any case, there is almost certainly sordid stuff on Trump out there and imo it is quite likely to surface in the next months. He is not helping things by going to war with much of the intelligence community, which by the way, makes it seem more credible that he feels the need to protect Putin at all costs.

[…][Chistopher Steele] was soon recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service, and by 1990 he was in Moscow as a spy working out of the British Embassy. His contemporaries included another young recruit, Alex Younger, who rose through the ranks to become the current head of MI6.

While Mr Younger was marked for greatness, Mr Steele was described by one source as a medium-ranked officer of middling ability, who spent most of his 20-year MI6 career on the Russia desk.

At one point he ran MI6’s Intelligence Officers New Entry Course at its training establishment in Hampshire, and he was appointed as case officer to the FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko. It was in 2006, shortly after Mr Steele’s retirement, that Mr Litvinenko was assassinated in London with a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210 added to his tea.

Nigel West, European Editor of the World Intelligence Review, suggests Litvinenko’s death inevitably coloured Mr Steele’s view of Russia, and turned him into a “man with a mission”.

By 2009 he had founded Orbis with Christopher Burrows, another MI6 retiree, offering clients access to a “high–level source network with a sophisticated investigative capability”.

So it was to Orbis that Jeb Bush , one of Mr Trump’s opponents in the Republican presidential primaries, reportedly turned when he wanted to find material that would damage the billionaire businessman.

Associates of Mr Bush hired FusionGPS, a Washington DC-based political research firm, which in turn hired Orbis in December 2015. When Mr Trump became the presumptive nominee, the Republicans ended the deal with FusionGPS, but Democratic supporters of Hillary Clinton stepped in and continued funding Mr Steele’s research.

* * * *

[…]]The 35-page dossier, however, did not see the light of day because of questions over its veracity. Journalists from numerous media companies spent months trying to find evidence to back up the claims made in the dossier, without success.

Meanwhile, Mr Steele, believing its contents to be too important to be restricted only to Mr Trump’s political enemies, is understood to have passed copies of his findings to both the FBI, via its Rome office, and to his old colleagues at MI6.

The Daily Telegraph has been told that the FBI arranged a meeting with Mr Steele in Europe where they discussed his findings with him. Sources have told the Telegraph that the FBI’s approach was approved by the British Government. [emphasis added]

So, a former MI6 agent, allegedly on an anti-Putin life mission, was hired by Jeb Bush, and later Hillary Clinton folks, to compile dirt on Trump, which he did, but none of it could be verified by multiple numerous media companies who would have loved to publish if it was at all verifiable. Which it wasn’t.

TOKYOBK- “He is not helping things by going to war with much of the intelligence community, which by the way, makes it seem more credible that he feels the need to protect Putin at all costs.

You have turned reality on its head. The CIA/Deep State is undertaking a color revolution type coup against Donald Trump in furtherance of their anti-Russian war agenda. But this is something which you support, so you fit the facts (or lack thereof) to support your biases. It is a sign of the times that many of those who label themselves “liberal” are now supporting a Deep State delegitimization to force Trump to continue the empire’s anti-Putin/Russia agenda, or, failing that, an unconstitutional coup. The “intel” is a joke which, nonetheless, has the imprimatur of the intel community. As such, it may be grounds for impeachment. The CIA has declared war on Trump and Trump will either cave or strike back. We enter tumultuous times. A couple of quotes.

“All of the above further confirms to me what I have been saying over the past weeks: if Trump ever makes it into the White House (I write ‘if’ because I think that the Neocons are perfectly capable of assassinating him), his first priority should be to ruthlessly crack down as hard as he legally can against those in the US “deep state” (which very much includes the media) who have now declared war on him. I am sorry to say that, but it will be either him or them – one of the parties here will be crushed.” (The Saker) http://thesaker.is/the-neocons-declaration-of-war-against-trump/

[Justin Raimondo:] […]We interrupt this fantasy to bring you an important announcement: it didn’t happen that way.

To begin with, anyone who thinks Orbis is a “private” intelligence agency, totally separate from MI6, the legendary British intelligence service, is delusional. These agencies – there are several, including the notorious Halykut, which recently surfaced in China – are simply extensions of the parent organization, MI6, which is, itself, intertwined with similar spook outfits in the US and throughout Europe. It’s an international fraternity, one that shares information, contacts, and a common worldview – and this last is what brings it into conflict with the President-elect.

When Trump began talking about how “obsolete” NATO is, their alarm bells began to go off. The alliance is the bedrock of the international security apparatus that nurtures and rewards this crowd, and the anchor of the expansionist agenda that envisions Ukraine and Georgia as the next entrants in the anti-Russian grand coalition.

Those alarm bells started screaming when Trump took up with Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader and spokesman for the rising nationalist anti-EU movement: the Brexit campaign dealt the internationalists a near mortal blow, and the Trump-Farage hook-up drove them up the wall. Like Trump, Farage is “pro-Russian,” i.e. he opposes the drive to war against Moscow, and the double victory of Trump-Brexit has the NATO-crats in a panic. Something had to be done.…[emphasis added]

Katie, I think you misunderstand or are very naughty, what’s happened here is that Trump’s idea of capitalism is that if the rich get richer then the 99% inevitably benefit Trump’s economic theory is used to describe the belief that if high income earners gain an increase in salary, then everyone in the economy will benefit as their increased income and wealth filter through to all sections in society. Its called the trickle down effect.

Definite snark, must confess purloined from Craig Murray blog “Given Trump’s wealth and history, I think we can say with confidence that he has indulged whatever his sexual preferences might be all over the world and not just in Russia. It seems most improbable he would succumb to blackmail over it and not brazen it out. I suppose it could be taken as the sole example of trickledown theory actually working”. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/01/hitler-diaries-mark-ii-hope-changed-mattress/

Steele did not release the dossier.
His job was to collect dirt, gossip and salacious details using his contacts in Russia.
Which he did.
He then submitted the dossier to M16 and FBI (or rather his client did), as these are right people to separate wheat (if there are any) from chaff.

His company is way too small to be able to verify and fact-check such a material, and I am sure Trump’s Democratic enemies who
originally commissioned dirt digging exercise did not feel
the need for verification.

Most of the research (or spying) in foreign countries is about gossip, unconnected bits of information and not least, an innuendo and scandals. Those peaces of information go through a number of sieves, before grains of truth are gleaned.

The leak of original dossier happened in USA, after FBI was given dossier for assessment and verification.

Don’t blame Steele. He did his job.

Whoever leaked it to Guardian and Washington Post
made sure that real impact of few damaging facts has
been diluted by obvious rubbish.

[…] [the report’s] sources are protected and described by alphabet letters, but are described by position to reveal their access to desired information. That is also what I would have expected from an intelligence officer or a good investigator.

But I also noted that quite a lot of the most significant information comes from a single source, Source E. This source’s credibility or lack thereof has to be considered an important issue. With the information publicly available, it is impossible to determine if he really knows what he claims.

Having done intelligence-based investigations for clients, I would have to observe that the initiators of this work were not looking for information to exonerate Trump. That means that the investigation was looking for negatives, which also implies that the investigative firm and the sources that it acquired were not interested in learning what a nice guy Trump is.

No reputable security investigative firm would out-and-out lie to a client (though there are plenty of non-reputable companies that would), but anybody who wants to stay in business would collect any and all information and present it in the most negative light possible, because that is what the client wants.

That determination would also hold true for the local sources for the report, all of whom would want to stay on the gravy train as long as possible. That means that they might fabricate if they considered it to be doable without getting caught.

What I am saying is that there is a tendency to report speculation and rumors as fact, or at least something approaching that, with the whole product being put together in such a fashion as to appear credible. That is precisely what I felt when I read through the 35 pages.

* * * *

My suspicion would be that the report is a composite of some fact, a lot of speculation, and even some fiction. It is very similar to the types of media-focused disinformation produced by both CIA and KGB in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, where a little bit of factual information would be used to provide credibility for a lot of speculation and false stories that were intended to sow doubt and confusion.

In this case, the original intent might well have been to discredit Trump personally; its release at this time is likely intended to delegitimize his presidency, or to narrow his options on recalibrating with Russia. [emphasis added]

Of course, this material is now useless as blackmail. Blackmail works by, in return for a consideration, keeping secret material which would be embarrassing if revealed.

But this has been revealed, and, although it has annoyed, it has failed to embarrass Trump. And, with all the fuss around this story, it seems unlikely that any other material now being concocted would be any more convincing.

The upshot is that, although some people may be shocked at the thought of a President who has associated with ladies, any further attempt at blackmail will fail.

John McCain’s involvement in this stinks to high heaven and needs to be investigated. When the ploy is pretty much at a dead end, he is given the “dossier” and then demands a one-on meeting with FBI Director Comey and demands an investigation. With apparently no investigation, CIA and FBI then decide it must be given to POTUS and POTUS-to-be under the theory that the latter could be blackmailed by the info. This is then leaked to high heaven which revives the discredited dossier ploy giving it a new life and invaluable publicity and credibility. “Blackmail” was just the cover motivation for giving this crap (sorry, Miranda, I meant urine) an incredible new buzz.

Undoubtedly, but the effect has been to free Trump from the danger of blackmail. Suppose the Bad Guys threaten to release dossiers showing Trump is guilty of the most appalling depravity – he wears pink silk knickers, he eats French cheese, he writes poetry – and then demand his compliance. He will be able to quote the Iron Duke, secure in the knowledge that if these horrors were revealed, much of the public would simply say “CIA/CNN at it again” and discount it.

And so what if Trump visited with prostitutes in Moscow…or the moon. It is between him and his wife. It seems to me that whoever is writing all this garbage is seeking more than just five minutes of fame. The author…never visited with prostitutes…never, ever? And so many other politicians haven’t done the same and still do? All this is a disgusting and revolting muckraking.

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